Spandau Phoenix (100 page)

"Phoenix to Graaff ... Phoenix to Graaff ... Do you read?" The tension in Pieter Smuts's voice was like a cable stretched near to breaking.

"Phoenix to Graaff! Where are your reinforcements?"

"Answer him!" Hauer told Captain Barnard. "Tell him Graaff's manning our turret gun!"

Hauer looked out at the house again: 160 meters. He gave Bernard an encouraging punch on the shoulder; then he ducked back into the crew compartment to confer with General Steyn.

The instant Hauer left the compartment, the driver lashed out with his elbow and struck Captain Barnard in the side of the head. The Arrnscor lurched to a halt 140 meters from Horn House. Hauer flew forward and crashed against a steel bulkhead; only his helmet prevented him from cracking his skull. The driver snatched u the radio microphone and be, p gan transmitting rapidly in Afrikaans: "Arinscor to Phoenix! Armscor to Phoenix! It's a tri( Trap!

Trap! Major Graaff isn't here -- -" Dazed, Hauer lunged back into the driver's compartment.

He did not understand Afrikaans, but he recognized a warning.

Taking hold of the driver's head, he wrenched with all his might, hoping to snap the man's cervical vertebrae. The driver went suddenly stiff, then limp.

"Take the wheel!" Hauer shouted at Captain BamardWhile Hauer dragged the driver back into the crew compartment, Captain Barnard scrambled into the driver's seat and wrestled the Armscor into gear.

The vehicle lurched forward, back, then began rolling toward the house again.

Hauer laid the senseless driver against the Armscor's side hatch and tore off his own respirator. "Another traitor!" he yelled to General SteynGeneral Steyn ripped off his gas mask. His face was flushed with anger and disbelief. At his feet the traitor squirmed and flung his arms upward. In a fit of rage Gadi kicked open the Armscor's side hatch and shoved the driver out onto the veld. By the time Gadi shut the hatch, a Libyan machine gunner had riddled the man's body with .30

caliber slugs.

The Armscor shivered as another Libyan machine gunner locked onto the tail of the armored car. Hauer grabbed General Steyn's arm. "I don't know if the tower heard that warning, but-" The sudden, steel-ripping roar of the Vulcan obliterated both Hauer's voice and the rattle of the Libyan machine guns.

Hauer leapt up to a firing slit. His stomach rolled as he watched the blazing tracer line march toward the nose of the Armscor. He had seen similar guns on American tank-killing planes on maneuvers in Germany.

The rotary guns mounted in their stubby snouts spewed out 5000

depleted-uranium slugs per minute-enough to turn a T-72 tank into a burning hulk in seconds.

Captain Barnard swerved to avoid the oncoming tracer beam, but the Vulcan gunner simply adjusted his fire.

Barnard screamed as the shells churned up the earth directly in front of the Armscor. Then suddenly-miraculously-the fiery stream of death winked out.

"He's jammed!" Hauer shouted. "Go! Go!"

The Annscor surged forward. Like a hailstorm from hell, slugs pounded the vehicle from every side as Smuts's bunker gunners opened up from their concealed positions. Hauer peered out through a gun port, trying to pinpoint the source of the fire.

"Bunkers!" he shouted. "They're dug into the hill!"

From a slit on the Annscor's right side, Gadi fired his R5

assault rifle in careful, three-round bursts, aiming for the muzzle flashes of the bunker guns. "Momser!" he shouted, but no one heard him. The noise inside the Armscor had reached a deafening level.

Hauer was leaning into the driver's compartment to urge Captain Barnard forward when Pieter Smuts detonated the first string of Claymore mines.

Two Claymores exploded directly beneath the Armscor, hurling the eighteen tons of hardened steel into the air like a child's toy. The vehicle tottered on its three right wheels, then crashed back onto all six and continued toward the house. Another string of Claymores exploded in front of the Armscor; hundreds of steel balls scythed into its hull, shattering the polycarbonate windshield. Captain Barnard screamed in pain, but the Arrnscor kept rolling.

Hauer's mind raced: they still had more than a hundred meters to cover.

The mines could be handled, but not under the fire of the tower gun. If the gunner cleared his weapon in the next thirty seconds, they didn't stand a chance. The Vulcan had to be silenced.

"Stop!" he roared. "Turn this thing sideways and stop!"

Captain Barnard-not enthusiastic about hitting any more mines himself-gladly obeyed. Hauer turned back to General Steyn and his men.

"Pour it in! I'm going Out!"

One of the masked men jumped down from a firing slit, ripped off his respirator and grabbed Hauer's arm. It was Gadi. "If you go out there, you're dead!" he yelled.

Hauer jerked his arm free. "Just keep those bunker guns off me!"

While Gadi stared, Hauer snatched up his sniper rifle and unlatched the Armscor's side hatch. The full din of battle filled the vehicle.

Holding the Steyr-Mannlicher close against his body, Hauer took a deep breath, and leaped outside.

He hit the ground hard and rolled beneath the huge vehicle, praying no one had seen him. He got to one knee. There was almost enough room for him to stand beneath the Arrnscor's undercarriage. The six giant wheels provided a wall from behind which he could fire in relative safc Bracing his right knee behind one of the giant tires, raised the Steyr to his shoulder and sighted in on the tower.

The last light of dusk had almost gone. He had no nightvision scope, but the standard Kahles-Helios ZF69 optical scope was excellent.

Even in near darkness it brought the tower in nicely.

When Hauer saw the turret in detail, he groaned. At 120 meters, accuracy wasn't the problem. With the Steyr, he could fire ten bullets into a sixteen-inch circle from six times that distance. The problem was the "glass" he saw forming part of the turret's circular wall. It would undoubtedly be made of transparent composite armor. Through the scope he searched for a weakness suited to his weapon. The turret rotates, he realized, noticing the huge gears mounted beneath the observatory dome. But I can't damage those gears. Twelve seconds later Hauer spotted his chance. Just where the Vulcan's six barrels protruded from the "glass," a narrow port had been cut so that the gun could be traversed vertically. Hauer felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

He could see men working frantically to clear the jammed weapon.

He laid his cross hairs on the tiny port and chambered a round into the breech. The Steyr accepted a ten-round magazine, but like most sniper rifles it was bolt-action. He would get one perfect chance, then nine snap shots. He took a deep breath and pressed his b(>dy into the huge tire that shielded him. He felt the reassuring weight of the rifle on his shoulder, the wooden stock cool and familiar against his stubbled cheek. The sound of the battle grew dim and distant as he focused on his target, melding his eye with the tiny crack between the Vulcan's barrels and the armored glass. In his mind, the coin-sized target expanded into a saucer, then a dinner plate ...

His finger settled firmly on the trigger.

Squeeze ...

The instant before Hauer fired, a blast of flame erupted from the Vulcan's spinning barrels. Tracer rounds arced out toward the rim of the bowl. The turret began to rotate ...

He felt his shot disintegrating. His shoulder twitched, his stomach heaved in sudden confusion. All around he heard the desperate rattle of guns firing at the moving turret, all to no avail. The dazzling beam marched from position to position, silencing one gun after another. He felt a sudden surge of hope. The gunner was ignoring the Armscor! He thinks we're out of the fight! Because we're not moving, he thinks his bunker guns stopped us! Hauer searched swiftly for a shot. With the turret rotating, hitting the tiny gun port was out of the question.

Instead he picked a spot a few centimeters to the left of the Vulcan's barrel-the spot he estimated the gunner would be sitting behind.

He fired.

Nothing happened. His bullet struck the very millimeter of glass he had aimed for, but the transparent armor was simply too strong. How many perfect shots would it take to drill through the polycarbonate?

Like an automaton Hauer worked the bolt-action rifle, tracking his moving target.

Fire! Eject shell, close bolt, fire! The transparent wall shuddered as Hauer's slugs relentlessly hammered the same single square of armor. Six shots ... seven ... eight ... Fire!

Eject shell, close bolt, fire! He jerked out the empty magazine and loaded his spare.

Around him the battle raged on. The Vulcan whined, the bunker guns chattered, the hull of the armored car rattled like a tin can in a hailstorm. He smelled the burning phosphorus of tracer rounds as they streaked across the field in brilliant, lethal arcs. Suddenly, with a strange shiver, Hauer sensed the Vulcan's tracer beam stagger somewhere off to his right. He jerked his eye away from the scope and scanned the dark field. Christ! The gunner had spotted his muzzle flashes!

His mouth went dry as the Vulcan's angle of fire lowered toward him.

Every fiber of his being screamed, "Run!" He shut his eyes against the fear, then forced himself to open them again and put his right eye back to the scope. Somewhere out there, he thought fiercely, is the man who is trying to kill me. He could feel the Vulcan's slugs hitting the ground, thousands in each burst, like the first shuddering waves of an earthquake. The roar seemed to swallow up,the very air.

And the light ... it was mesmerizing, like some lunatic laser beam.

The tracer beam slowed as it neared the Armscor. Smuts wanted to be sure he did not miss. In that moment of hesitation Hauer steadied his twitching muscles, fixed his eye upon the tiny square of armored glass he had spent his first magazine against, and opened fire.

Pieter Smuts found his mark first. In the first two seconds of contact, the Vulcan slammed two hundred shells into the Armscor's tail, shearing off a quarter-ton of hardened si armor.

The vehicle shuddered like a great wounded beast; black smoke poured into the air. Suddenly the Armscor's turbocharged V-8 diesel roared to life. In a last frantic bid for survival Captain Barnard floored the accelerator. The armored car bolted forward like a wild bronco, leaping out of the Vulcan's line of fire and leaving Hauer exposed on the ground.

Stunned, kneeling alone on the dark plain, Hauer raised his rifle and pressed his eye to the scope. Dirt showered over him as the Vulcan's bullets thundered after the Armscor just meters away. There is nothing here, said a voice in his brain, nothing but you and the man behind that gun ...

He fired.

His bullet starred the glass.

He fired again.

The tracer beam jinked away from, the Armscor and moved back toward him.

Too late Smuts had realized where the real danger lay.

With the Vulcan gun thundering down upon him, Dieter Hauer actually closed his eyes as he fired his last shot. The tracer beam stuttered, flashed again ... winked out.

The spell was broken. Hauer scrambled to his feet and dashed after the Armscor. Gadi Abrams dragged him back through the hatch.

"You crazy German bastard!"

The Armscor was filling rapidly with oily black smoke.

"Everybody shoot!" Hauer shouted. "Clear a path through the mines!

Detonate everything in our path!"

One Claymore exploded harmlessly nearby, but no more.

The Armscor had reached the section of ground where Burton's Colombians had been slaughtered the night before. The mines here had been spent, no replacements laid. The Annscor roared forward and reached Horn House in twenty seconds flat.

Captain Barnard pulled the vehicle across the main entrance like a barricade. Instantly two South African CT troops thrust shotguns through the ports and blasted the hinges off the teakwood door. When Hauer shoved open the side hatch, he was staring straight into the marble reception hall where Major Karami's assassins lay dead.

"Move out!" he shouted.

"Wait!" General Steyn was up in the driver's compartment, leaning over Captain Barnard. Hauer remembered the young man had taken some glass in the face when the windshield shattered, but as he peered over the general's beefy shoulder he realized that Captain Barnard was suffering from a mortal wound.

"Where is it, son?" General Steyn asked softly.

"My chest ... sir."

Carefully the general probed the young man's torso.

"I thought he was wearing a vest," Hauer said quietly.

General Steyn pulled a bloodstained hand from beneath Barnard's right arm. "There's a splinter of polycarbonate sticking out of him," he whispered. "Right where the vest stops at the underarm. God only knows how deep it went in." He turned back to Captain Barnard. "Can you move, lad?"

The young man tried to smile, then coughed in agony. "It feels like the damned thing is buried in my heart. Like a sword ... swear to God. Go on."

General Steyn's neck flushed red. "Nonsense, lad, you're coming with us."

"Don't move me, sir," Captain Barnard gurgled. "Please don't."

General Steyn looked ready to twist off the head of the man who had caused this pain. Setting his mouth in a grim line, he drew a .45